Drowning in pictures: 24 hours in the life of Flickr

A visitor to Erik Kessels' 24 hrs photo installation at the Foam Fotografiemuseum in Amsterdam.

Gijs Van Den Berg / Foam

Dutch curator Erik Kessels has created a gallery installation made up of over a million photo prints. Kessels printed out all the images that were publically posted on Flickr during a 24-hour period and dumped them on the floor of the Foam museum in Amsterdam. Visitors are being encouraged to interact with the mountains of photographs, as seen in the picture above.

"We're exposed to an overload of images nowadays," Kessels told Creative Review. "This glut is in large part the result of image-sharing sites like Flickr, networking sites like Facebook, and picture-based search engines. Their content mingles public and private, with the very personal being openly and un-selfconsciously displayed. By printing all the images uploaded in a 24-hour period, I visualize the feeling of drowning in representations of other peoples' experiences."

Kessels told the BBC he hopes the installation also shows people "how public your private photos have become. Before, you had your photo album and only your family and friends could look at it," he said. "Now people all over the world can look at it if they find it."